


Work Song

by AndYourPoint



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 07:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5819365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndYourPoint/pseuds/AndYourPoint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'll crawl home to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Work Song

**Author's Note:**

> I guess this can be considered a squeal to my other work "Let Me Know", read that one first if you wish.

It’s like something had pulled the plug, I was drained, completely empty.

I had fought so hard against myself that I hadn’t even realized how burned out I was. I was facing something much bigger than I was. My demons set me on fire and I could no longer tell the sweat from the tears on my skin. Why couldn’t they just let me be? Haven’t I suffered enough, fought enough? I had been holding them at bay, using everything in my power to shield her from the darkest parts of me. The walls I pushed against melted around my fingers and dripped down my arms. My good intentions were no longer valid enough to protect us. Soon there would be nothing left between us and the hot darkness clawing its way to me.

I think about her. I think about what I’ve had to do to keep her safe from all of this, from me. She fills me with so much love and I burn it to protect her. It fuels my fight and it pushes me when things get this bad. I can’t face her, I can’t turn around for even a moment. If I stop fighting to even steal a glance at her, my walls will cave in on us. I know how this would go. She is sugar coated in a way that she would melt if I let my guard down. She would seep through the holes in my hands and stain the floors. There would be nothing left, but a slight tint of the place she used to be.

I’m not ready to lose her in between the floorboards. If I must turn my back to her to keep her safe, to push the flames back, then I will. I will and I will hope that one day she will understand why.

This might take me, this fight, this war inside of me. I might die in the arms of my adversaries, laid to rest in an unfamiliar bed of dust. However, rest is a foreign concept to me. I will never rest, it is a luxury I have never allowed myself to have. Mere soil could not capture me. I will never be a prisoner of war to the earth. Even on empty, even if my body had been destroyed in the fight, I would crawl home to her. Nothing could keep me away. My eyes had never wandered, never searched, for anyone else.

Dirt compacted beneath my fingernails, mud falling from my face, I would drag myself back to her.    

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hadn't been sober in 3 days when she found me. What had started at a bar had ended in the floor of my kitchen. My eyes still remained wet, racetracks streaked down my face waiting for the next line of contenders.   
  
Then there she was, as perfect and put together as she's always been. She was distorted to me, the waves in my eyes presenting her as an illusion. I wouldn't have believed she was there had she not touched me. Her hands uncalloused and confident, so unlike mine. She touched me with a softness I had yet to feel in all my years. I tried to hide behind one hand, the other too preoccupied grasping onto a bottle. I tried to hide the mess that I was behind the very hand that had hurt so many people. Why did she have to see me like this?

I hadn't been able to abandon this spot on the floor. My drunken resolve had me convinced that this spot, leaning against the cabinet beneath the sink, was the only stable place I had. My slurred conviction told me that the sand in my palm was the only true Christ. The only truth for me was at the bottom of any bottle I could find.   
  
When she pulled my hand from my face and replaced it with her own, suddenly the bottle became all too heavy. She held my face in her hands and brushed over the tears there. I could no longer support the weight of my freedom and it slipped from my hand. I felt the hollowness of the noise it made in my chest as it rolled from me. I was just as empty, what was left spilling over the rim just barely, lacking any control in the way we moved.   
  
"Hope, come home." She whimpered.  
  
The sobs that tore through me betrayed my theology. That bottle never looked so broken, no Christ would leave me that way. No deity would call forth raging rivers from my body to destroy the life that had been made.   
  
Her chest became my religion. I fell into her and threw all other beliefs away. I held onto her like one might hold a rosary in the desperation of prayer. Her arms became the walls of my church and as she held me in the depths of my despair, I prayed that I would finally find peace.   
  
She never gave in to the doubts circling me like scavengers. She never held the things that my body had done against me. She never pushed away my hands that had been stained with so much pain.   
  
If the Lord wouldn't forgive me, I knew that at least I would have her and that was enough for me. Heaven and hell became empty threats or at least an image I could accept as a future. I didn't feel the darkness that loomed over me quite as heavy now. She had become a low lit lamp in my shadow. Dim enough to respect my pitch, but bright enough so that I could finally find my path. I could finally close eyes because my saving grace would be there when they opened again.  
  
Her head was against mine when I woke and I stopped breathing. Or maybe I had already stopped. I hadn't felt my own heart beat in too long. My head rushed with a fever I had never felt before. Was this me getting better or was I finally falling ill to my past judgements? Had this all been a fever dream? It must've been. She can't be real, no one in their right self would do this, put up with this. She never once asked me about the wrong I had done.  
  
No. She can't be real. I must’ve dreamed her.  
  
But then she put her lips down softly and quietly told me that she was real.

She had found me in the depths of the fire and pulled me out. She wasn’t melted, crystalized by the heat, she withstood it all. Maybe a tad singed around the edges, but intact none the less.

There she was, just as she had always been, whispering promises of rest against my skin. She was etching prayers of peace into my heart, assuring me that I was not in the fight alone. She would be there to rip me from the flames no matter how many times or how badly I was burned. She was the guardian angel I never deserved. She would always be a force to keep me going, to help me find my way.

She was my work song and I would always crawl home to her.

**Author's Note:**

> This was based of the title song by Hozier. I was glad to have felt the need to write again. It's a bit shorter than I wanted, but it'll do. Leave your thoughts.  
> A.Y.P.


End file.
